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<\/a><\/p>\nHitler’s birthplace in Braunau, Austria, as seen on Jan. 15, 2015, as the Austrian government considered forcing a sale to prevent the site’s misuse. A commemorative plaque denouncing fascism was preserved during a later renovation into a police station. (Johannes Simon\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After years of discussion, planning and construction, the new police station on a corner near Braunau\u2019s town square opened July 22, in the house where the future Nazi dictator was born in 1889 and spent the first few months of his life.<\/p>\n
The building looks different, and there will now be surveillance cameras out front. The city\u2019s aim was \u201cto prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique,\u201d the head of the Austrian interior ministry\u2019s history department, Stephan Mlczoch, told reporters on a recent tour.<\/p>\n
At Wednesday\u2019s opening ceremony, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner emphasized that today\u2019s police are \u201cthe exact opposite of the symbolism tied to this place. Our police stand \u2026 for democracy and the rule of law,\u201d The Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n
Some 50 local and district police officers will be stationed at the new site. And there will also reportedly be a police training program on issues related to human rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will probably also do antisemitism training. And I think that\u2019s a good thing,\u201d Hannah Lessing, who was on the expert commission to decide what should be done with the property, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. Lessing, who co-chairs the Austrian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, was opposed to tearing down the building:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like historical cancellation. But we should use it for something,\u201d she said. \u201cA museum was for me not a good idea, because it would attract automatically people who are probably Hitler fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Ulmer is a retired officer with the Stuttgart police who fought to turn a former Gestapo headquarters in his German city into a place of remembrance. He said the new site could benefit the officers who are stationed there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important to convey the memory and the history to young people, to young police trainees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Today \u2014 as an activist in the VelsPol advocacy organization for queer staff in the police and justice system \u2014 Ulmer brings police recruits to the Hotel Silber Memorial and Learning Center, where they learn how police were co-opted into the Nazi machine.<\/p>\n
Recently, he helped design an exhibit in another former Hitler dwelling that became a police station: a nine-room apartment on Prinzregentenplatz in Munich. The exhibit, which spanned 100 years of history, included the years in which Hitler\u2019s popularity grew after the Beer Hall Putsch, his attempted coup in 1923.<\/p>\n
The Munich station\u2019s head, Andreas Franken, doesn\u2019t hide the building\u2019s history, Ulmer said. In his office, Franken even has the famous photo of the American war photographer Lee Miller sitting in Hitler\u2019s bathtub.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people come to him, whether they\u2019re new police officers or just other people, they always ask him about this picture, and then he can tell the story of the building again,\u201d Ulmer said.<\/p>\n
Back in Braunau, the new police station \u201cwill continue to be known as \u2018Hitler\u2019s birthplace\u2019 and will attract visitors accordingly,\u201d laments Austrian filmmaker G\u00fcnter Schwaiger, who had opposed the plan back in 2023. In his documentary, \u201cWho\u2019s afraid of Braunau?\u201d, he claimed that Hitler himself wanted to have local officials move into the rooms where he was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt used to be a modest house, but now the Austrian government has turned it into a monument,\u201d he said in an email to the JTA. \u201cWe probably need a different generation \u2014 one that isn\u2019t afraid of the truth and has the courage to truly come to terms with the past. I hope that generation will emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also disappointed is California attorney Cary Lowe, who was born in Braunau to Holocaust survivors. He was originally in favor of turning the site into a \u201cHouse of Responsibility.\u201d That plan is still alive, with another local site in mind. The city did \u201ctheir best to come up with a result that\u2019s acceptable to everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s a done deal, so I think we just have to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The building where Hitler was born dates back to the early to mid-19th century and sits, along with some other structures, on about three quarters of an acre. It has been privately owned, and over the years has housed a school and a branch of a disability support organization.<\/p>\n
In 1989, a memorial stone taken from the quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp was erected in front of the house, and inscribed with a warning \u201cNever again fascism.\u201d Noticeable visits by neo-Nazis declined since then, Cary Lowe told JTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, they still get the occasional individual that wants to carry out a pilgrimage or do a photo op or something in front of the house,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s on a much smaller scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2017, the city of Braunau expropriated the vacant property and organized an expert commission to debate possible uses, or even demolition. Suggestions ranged from the serious \u2014 a museum \u2014 to the wild: An Austrian artist collective called Total Refusal suggested that a controversial statue of Vienna\u2019s wartime mayor Karl Luegers, a devoted antisemite, be picked up by helicopter and dropped over Hitler\u2019s birth house.<\/p>\n
But that was not to be. After deciding on the police station option, renovation began. Even then, the idea that Hitler fanatics might seek relics led the city to grind down all the construction rubble and bury it in a secret location.<\/p>\n
Lessing hopes that the new police station will reach the younger generation, with lessons of the past newly accessible in Braunau and not just at concentration camp sites in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t need another museum,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have Mauthausen for that.\u201d<\/p>\n